


thread tails

by raggirare



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, McGenji Secret Santa, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 01:26:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9049633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raggirare/pseuds/raggirare
Summary: The end of the year brings different things for different people. An exchange of culture and new experiences and horrible fashion senses.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For [twunkmccree](http://twunkmccree.tumblr.com/) for the McGenji Secret Santa. I hate ugly Christmas sweaters but god I couldn't resist.

“ _What_ are you wearing?”

Jesse paused at the voice from the door and lowered the string of colourful lights he was in the middle of hanging to turn around. His face split into a grin with only a glance down at himself, and he let the lights fall from his hands. 

“Y’like it?” he asked as he stepped towards Genji, hands running down the front of his sweater. He tugged at the bottom hem to hold the material taut and to allow the other to properly appreciate the bright design. It was oversized, designed for his scrawny body to eventually grow into, and the sleeves were long enough to threaten to slip over his hands, held in place only by the cuffs. “Ana knitted it fer me a few years back. Said ev’ryone needs at least.”

“It is…” Genji gave nothing away. His tone was flat and mechanical, and his face was still hidden behind that visor, and he stood stock still in the doorway with his arms wrapped around a large box. “Very _you_.”

Jesse scoffed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” He nodded towards the box. “Those from Gabe?”

With a nod, Genji stepped fully into the recreation room and approached the corner where Blackwatch’s tree had been set up. Phillips had insisted on a real tree and Hsu had somehow managed to help her find what the rest of the agents were convinced was the biggest tree in the forest. Even without the little pot Anders had managed to hoist it into, the tree was too tall for the low roof of their segregated rec room deep in the Gibraltar cliff face, and it loomed over the circle ofsofas with its longer lower branches partially blocking the screen of the television.

“Is there a method to this?” Genji asked as he placed the box on the floor and opened it, watching the lights of the room and of his visor reflecting off of the baubles and the tinsel and blown glass ornaments. He reached down and lifted a bundled coil of firey orange tinsel, letting the tails at either end slip through his fingers. It was an almost numb sensation against the sensors that had replaced his nervous system, like petting a cat’s tail through thick gloves. He wrapped the tinsel around his neck in movements still engrained in muscle memory and it took a chuckle from behind him to draw his attention back to Jesse. “Is something the matter?”

“Should use one of the red ones instead.” Laughter carried into Jesse’s voice as he stepped closer, a hand reaching into the box of decorations to fish out a deep red length of tinsel. “Then y’can be m’own personal christmas tree. Y’even got preinstalled lights’n’all.”

Genji shook his head, fingers resting on the tinsel wrapped thickly around his neck. “Red is… not my colour.” There was a beat of silence before he began to ease the tinsel from around his neck, coiling it as neatly as he could before he returned it to the box. He began to dig through the other decorations, instead, and draw out a small fabric bag. “What are these?”

Jesse reached a hand out, head tilted in questioning curiousity, and opened the bag once Genji had passed it over. “Ah,” he hummed with a smile. “These are Blackwatch.” He reached into the bag and pulled out what Genji could only guess was supposed to be some sort of ornament, even if it was made of a shell casing and a scrap of red material similar to Jesse’s handkerchief. “Ev’ryone’s go’ one. Ones who’re here now. Ones who lef’. Ones who died. Ones who disappeared. Gabe tends t’make’em, bu’ some of us make ‘em ourselves.”

“Then I will leave the hanging of those to you,” Genji declared as he turned his attention back to exploring the rest of the box, taking a mental stocktake of the box’s contents. More tinsel than he really knew what to do with, ornaments ranging from colourful balls to glass shapes he couldn’t entirely identify, and coils of lights at the very bottom. “I think… it may be better if you lead all of this. I really am not sure of what is expected.”

A low and hearty chuckle tumbled from Jesse, but he only nodded.

“Let’s ge’ this ol’ girl all dolled up.”

———

“I was unaware that you were capable of knitting, Jesse.”

Jesse hadn’t looked up when he’d heard footsteps enter the room with a quiet greeting. The Blackwatch barracks were an open space (only Gabe and Abied had their own private quarters as the two commanding officers of the covert unit), so it was normal for people to come and go as they pleased. Jesse’s bed was tucked away in the back corner, having been given the most uncomfortable bed years ago when he’d been conscripted and now too used to it to want to try and get a new one. The fact the footsteps had approached him hadn’t worried him too much, either; Genji’s bed was directly opposite his own.

Except Genji hadn’t gone straight to his bed. Instead, he had come to stand at the end of the sharpshooter’s, looking down at where Jesse had dismantled two of his sidearms for cleaning from his earlier target practice (six-shooters were his preference, of course, but experience had taught him it was better to not put all his eggs in one basket).

“I cannot judge, of course. Nor can I be surprised after Gabriel’s display at the Hallowe’en party. It was simply… _igai_ _na_ … unexpected, I believe is the word.”

Though the cyborg continued to speak, none of the words really stuck in Jesse’s head or carried much meaning. He was lost, not only in why Genji was rambling, but also in the younger man’s attire. Much of it was normal, daily wear indicative of the fact that his friend had been working on basic training rather than anything more specialised that required his armour. His upper half, however, was somewhat drowning in a pine green wool, highlighted with bright green and silver. Designs of shuriken and blades encircled the sweater and framed a single dancing dragon coiled at his midriff.

It was familiar, not in the way that Jesse had seen it somewhere before, but because of something else. It took a few seconds of blankly staring in the cyborg’s direction before it finally occurred to him, and when it did, it broke a wide smile across his lips.

“Now, where’d’ya ge’ tha’ so early?” He asked, sitting back a little. “Ain’ y’know Christmas ain’t till next week.”

“You left it for me, Jesse, with a note saying I was allowed to open it, remember?” Genji tilted his head to the side. He fidgeted with the sleeves of the sweater for a moment, tugging the too-long sleeves up, before folding his arms across his chest. “I had finished arranging the _kadomatsu—_ “ The word evaded Jesse for a moment before he remembered them to be the bamboo and pine decorations he had seen Genji and Nara assembling on either side of the entrance to the Blackwatch base. “—and had returned to assemble the _kagami mochi_ —“ Jesse glanced at the small table between the feet of their two beds pushed up against the wall and the strange pile of white food he didn’t recognise with an orange on top. “—when I found a present from you placed on my pillow. Inside was this.”

Jesse blinked.

Genji tilted his head in the other direction.

“Do you truly not recall?” There was a moment of hesitation that followed. “Or was there a mix up..? Perhaps I misunderstood. I had been speaking with Nara in Japanese extensively prior to finding it so I may have negatively affected my English understanding momentarily.”

“No!” Jesse blurted out before he could stop himself, hands reaching out to place themselves on Genji’s hips. “Shoo’, no, no, darlin’, nothin’ like tha’. I, uh… I was worried y’ain’ gon’ like it, seein’ how y’reacted t’mine the other day. ’S’why I left i’ for’ya t’find, so y’could open it in private ’n’ no’ hafta worry ‘bout hidin’ your reaction.”

His hands lingered in the silence that followed, and he swallowed a lump in his throat, hoping it was only him finding the moment awkward.

When Genji finally replied, he unfolded his arms and placed his hands on top of the sharpshooter’s. “Jesse McCree, you are a terrible liar.”

Jesse tried for a grin. “Which part gave me away?”

“Where should I even begin?”

The grin gave way to an awkward laugh, but Genji’s hands kept Jesse’s in place, so the elder could only escape with a bow of his head, eyes flicking down to his dismantle handguns. “I wasn’ lyin’ ‘bout bein’ worried ‘bout you likin’ it. Bu’ tha’s it. I ain’ creative like none of the others. Can spin a pre’y good yarn, I guess, bu’ ain’ much I can do with clothes. So I asked Ana. Had the idea in my head’n’all, but needed her magic fingers to make it happen.” He lifted his head again, the smile on his face hopeful. “Guess she must’a snuck it in here when we were all busy.”

The silence that followed was almost instantaneously suffocating. Jesse was thankful that Genji didn’t leave him to suffer for too long.

“I will admit, I did actually believe that you had knitted this yourself. Perhaps because I had already convinced myself of that. But that you designed it, even without being the artisan, and went out of your way to have it made for me…” Genji looked down at himself, hands letting go of Jesse’s so that he could tug a little at the lower hem to give himself a better view of the design. “You are a very thoughtful man, Jesse McCree. No gift will be able to be greater than this one.”

“Even though it’s a shitty Christmas sweater?”

Genji laughed, quiet and contained, echoing with the mechanical assistance his voice required to work, and he nodded. “Yes, even with that, and even though my gift may feel inadequate in comparison.”

Jesse smiled, at the laughter and at his words, and he finally pulled his hands away from the cyborg’s hips. He carefully collected up the parts of his handguns and placed them on top of the next bed over (Oliveira’s; on a mission for two more weeks, so he could get away with it for now). With space cleared, he shifted up the mattress and gestured for Genji to join him, pressing himself up against the wall on the other side of the bed to give the younger man room. He lay down, rolling onto his side, and propped his head up on one hand while the back of his other stroked over Genji’s faceplate.

“Ain’t need t’get me nothin’, darlin’,” he crooned, drawing his hand back to allow Genji to remove his faceplate. “Never much liked learnin’ when I was younger, bu’ it’s been grea’ learnin’ all ‘bout wha’ y’celebrated back home. Talked t’Gabe as well, ’n’ he sai’ he don’ mind us takin’ off fer New Years. We’re draggin’ y’through our shi’. Migh’ as well le’ y’drag me through yours as well.”

“Perhaps. But I have gotten you a gift regardless.”

———

“I think he’s trying to tell you something, _pendejo_ ,” Gabriel barked a laugh as he picked another parcel from under the tree and passed it along to Phillips.

Jesse only screwed his nose in disgust at the captain before looking back down at the clothing neatly folded in his lap, admiring the tailoring and the clean lines and the sheer luxurious quality of the material used in putting it all together. He cast a glance beside him, where Genji had drawn his knees up to his chest to fit into the corner of the sofa four of them had tried to squeeze onto.

“It is simply variety,” Genji reasoned with a small voice. “Less conspicuous to wear in Japan. You had mentioned you needed a new scarf, and capes are just as warm as well. And blue and black matches well with my silver and green.”

“Admit it, darlin’. Y’hate how I dress.”

“And yet I agreed to match with you.”

Jesse glanced down at his sweater, fidgeting with the sleeves for a moment before slinging an arm around Genji’s shoulders and smiling at the way the green and red of their sweaters clashed.

“That y’did, darlin’. That y’did.”

**Author's Note:**

> If it wasn't clear, Genji gifted Jesse his Mystery Man skin get up.


End file.
